


together now

by alpacas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 'because the mighty nein sure forgot', Gen, additional warning for caleb and nott being super cuddly, also warning for abuse of the message spell, as in 'remember how nott got like five arrows in the chest', as is always and forever canon, everyone is kind of an asshole in this story, filling in a slight plothole from e23 'have bird will travel', gee i wonder who that refers to, i will chalk it up to Early Ish Canon, nott is nott the greatest patient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 23:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18061955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: Caleb lays his arm over her hunched shoulder, and immediately realizes two things:Nott's sleeve is damp and hot, and he smells blood.





	together now

**Author's Note:**

> anon on tumblr asked me for 'the mighty nein comfort nott when she is sick/hurt,' and it turned into a whole other thing — remember way back in 'have bird, will travel?' meeting the syphilis bandits for the second time? before that encounter devolved into hilarity, nott was ambushed for 24/40 HP and it was never addressed again. 
> 
> i also wanted to try — you know, episode 23, the mighty nein are not as close as they are now. it was fun trying to write a more prickly dynamic, back when they were only weeks, not half a year, together.

They return to the cart with the bandit's blankets in arm, Molly and Beau still laughing about the whole thing: meeting the same bandits, twice. The one they left unconscious in the fields. Lavender oil!

Caleb smiles when he perceives someone looking, but he's tired. The rush of panic, of adrenaline, has left his body, and he's now acutely aware of how late it is. How tired he is. Even the giggles from the others sound a bit hyper, a bit strained to his ear. From ambush to hilarity in five minutes. Welcome to the Mighty Nein.

Back at the cart, they settle back into still-warm bedrolls, quieting so as not to wake the still sleeping Kiri. Caleb curls back into his blankets gladly. Jester passes around the new blankets, and he takes one when she offers.

"Do you want to share?" Caleb asks Nott softly; he's growing quite cold, now that his adrenaline is ebbed away. She's always warm, her heart racing away in her tiny frame; he's not at all above using it to his advantage.

"Oh — okay," she says distractedly. Caleb frowns. He offers her half of the blanket, scooting his bedroll closer to hers. She takes it, he feels the tug, and her form shrinks in the dim light as she lies down facing away from him, as far away as possible under the same woolen blanket.

He feels a pang of something a lot like rejection, which Caleb reminds himself is foolish, because Nott can sleep however she wants, even if he is cold. He lies on his back and looks up at the cloudy sky. Jester and Beau murmur softly to one another a few yards away. The others lie silently, but for Kiri's soft, whispery breathing as she sleeps.

Is Nott angry at him, perhaps? He was slow to raise the alarm, but — no, even Caleb knows that Nott doesn't resent things like that, even when she should, and he did wake the others quickly, lead them to her in the field. Her silence must simply be her own reaction to fading panic…

But she hadn't joined in the looting of the bodies or pranking of the unconscious bandit or any of the other things she usually enjoys…

"Nott?" Caleb whispers, as softly as he can. She doesn't reply, and he absurdly wants to take out his bit of wire and ask her with _message_ — as though that would ensure she heard him. She's probably just asleep.

He turns to his side, distracted from his own exhaustion. In the near complete darkness, Nott appears as nothing more than a lump in her blankets — he knows her well enough to know she prefers to sleep curled in a ball like a cat, and can imagine what he cannot see: her forehead pressed into a knee, her ears relaxed and drooping, the odd frown she often has when asleep. Her weird snuffling breaths. Although, Caleb realizes, she's silent now.

Something is tugging at the edge of his mind, he knows there is something — he doesn't know. He's cold, and he's tired. He scoots himself closer to her and he sighs, frustrated with himself. Caleb lays his arm over her hunched shoulder.

And immediately realizes two things:

Nott's sleeve is damp and hot, and he smells blood.

Caleb has had this nightmare before —

He starts back away from her, sitting up in a panic, he imagines great waves of dark blood, staining all up and over his body, and then he imagines he imagined it, and then he's moving his hand and casting _Dancing Lights_ , because Nott went into the field, she went into the field, and the bandits were all armed —

Everyone jumps out of their dozes with yelps of surprise and alarm. Nott stirs as well, at the bursts of light above the camp, at Caleb, at Caleb yanking the blankets away — she bolts upright, bolts to her feet. "Wha —! What's wrong? Are we being attacked again!"

"That's my fucking question!" Fjord calls back, on his feet as well, his falchion dripping in his hand.

"What the fuck, Caleb?" Beau asks.

But Caleb is staring at Nott, who is clutching her shortsword — because her other hand is pressed to her side. Her shoulder is dark with blood. He sees another bloom of it at her ribs, soaking through all her layers and graying clothing. He cannot look away.

Jester sees it next. "Nott! What happened?" she shrieks, and Caleb can hear other sounds as the others start to see it too, but he cannot look away.

Nott looks around at them all, uncomfortable and embarrassed. "What are you all talking about?" she asks unconvincingly.

Molly strolls up and crouches down before her, taking her hand — the one she still has pressed to her side — and pulling it into his. Her palm comes up red with blood. Nott immediately flinches away from Molly's touch, yanking her hand back towards herself. "What the hell is that?" Molly asks, his voice somewhere between cheery and smug and _angry_.

Caleb looks down at his own hand, where he'd touched her. He expects it just as red, but the bandage on his palm has just a single brownish smear of blood.

"What are you guys — cut it out!" Nott says shrilly, looking around at everyone but Caleb.

"How many times did you get hit, and why the hell didn't you _say_ so?" Molly demands.

"Three — or four, but it wasn't _bad_ ," Nott says, still clutching her hand to her. She backs away: away from Molly, away from Caleb. Towards the edge of the camp.

Jester trips over her own bedroll in her haste to catch up to Nott, recovers and heals her by smushing Nott's cheeks between her palms. "If you're hurt, you gotta tell me! I'm like, the _cleric_!" she scolds, kneeling down to Nott's level.

Nott looks at the ground. "I'm _fine_ ," she says angrily. "It's not important."

"Fuck," Beau says, somehow conveying a lot of different things in the word.

"Yeah, I'm thinking maybe we should have gone ahead and killed those bandits," Fjord replies darkly.

Molly swears under his breath, standing back up and walking somewhere behind Caleb. Caleb watches Nott, who is avoiding looking at Jester, and Jester, who is openly concerned.

A dark shape approaches out of the corner of his eye, and he's tense enough that he almost prepares to burn them alive before he recognizes a yawning Kiri with Jester's medkit in her arms. "Yes, I am very sweet," she says, presenting it to the girls.

"Ohh, Kiri, thank you!" Jester says, taking it and going for the bandages inside.

"The spell _worked_ , I'm _fine_ ," Nott says, sullen.

"But your clothes are a mess and you like to have bandages on your arms anyway, because you're shy, right?" Jester replies fairly.

Fjord, Molly, and Beau are talking quietly behind Caleb, discussing if anything should be done, each accusing the other two of not knowing Nott had been so badly hurt. Nott looks off into the darkness as Jester unwraps her arms, Kiri holding the clean bandages in wait.

A large figure approaches Caleb, and once again he almost attacks, but this time it's Yasha. She sits down next to him, silently, and he finds that he doesn't mind. Together they watch the girls, as the others take off crashing through the fields on a quick patrol, coming back only a few minutes later empty handed.

"Did you kill anything?" Yasha asks softly.

"No, there wasn't anyone…" Beau grumbles.

"I'll tell you what, if we meet those sorry bastards as a third time, it will end a _lot_ less nicely for the lot," Molly says darkly.

"Nott!" Fjord calls.

She glances behind Caleb to where Fjord must be standing.

"Next time, if you get hurt, you _say_ something, got it? Then we can go off and kill the fuckers right away and get you healed right away, not stomp around at two in the fucking morning."

It's three eighteen, actually, but Caleb isn't capable of speech.

"Okay, I'll do that, _if_ I get hurt—"

"You were hurt now!" Jester interrupts. "Look," and she pokes Nott's shoulder and Nott winces, "See? That's a bruise because my healing wasn't exactly good enough to cure it all exactly, which means you were really hurt."

" _If_ I get hurt and it's nothing I can handle," Nott concludes, giving Jester an uncharacteristically sharp look.

"Fine, whatever," Fjord says, giving up.

Jester looks hurt. Kiri puts a hand on her forearm. "Go fuck yourself," she says sweetly.

"I'll heal you again in the morning," Jester says with a sigh, her expression sobering. "Because I don't care what you say and because we're really good friends even though you're being so dumb right now."

One by one, everyone begins to settle back to bed: everyone but Nott, who remains standing at the edge of camp, her eyes fixed stubbornly on something on the ground just to the right of her. Everyone but Caleb, who hasn't moved since waking everyone else.

Rather than amused by the bandits, the camp's mood is now oddly sullen, oddly angry, and Caleb sits still and silent, watching Nott.

"Caleb! Mind hitting the lights?" Beau hisses after a few minutes, and it's only then that he ends his spell.

The camp is plunged back into darkness, and it takes a few minutes for Caleb's eyes to adjust. He blinks in the blackness, struggling to make out shapes and shadows.

Then, he hears a magical whisper in his ear: _Are you mad at me? You can reply to this—_

" _No_ ," he whispers back.

 _—Message_. And then silence, but his eyes have adjusted just enough to see a small shape moving back towards her bedding, which is of course next to his. Caleb remains sitting upright as Nott creeps silently back into the camp. She bundles herself back into her blankets, curls herself back into a ball, faces herself away from him once more. He is only imagining, surely, the scent of blood.

He takes his own wire out with trembling fingers and speaks so softly his lips barely move. _You should have at least told me_.

Nott is silent, long after the spell's window to reply closes, and Caleb's heart sinks slowly: he doesn't understand, he doesn't know why, he had thought that she perhaps relied on him as he relies on her —

_I didn't want to worry anyone. You can reply to this message._

There is a knot, there is always a knot, there in the ball of Caleb's stomach; it never fades and now it grows. He wishes — for some action, some word or spell he can take, has an almost itchy feeling in his arms — he wishes to reach out for her.

 _I understand_ , he admits.

There is no sense in saying that they only worry more in their fear and surprise. There is no sense in saying the anger of the Mighty Nein, the anger in the camp, is not at Nott but at their helplessness, their lack of awareness, that their worry only increased and led into panic (he imagines her dead and dying, he sees himself rushing through the field to a small crumbled body in the grass —

He imagines fire, he imagines burning, the grass an ocean of flame, her small lifeless body dark and unharmed in the center —)

Had he known he was hurt he would have killed them all. Slowly and painfully. He should have seen she was.

Were he stronger, were it him, he might hide it too.

Abruptly, she shifts in her blankets. She burrows herself close to him, still seated, lays her head on his thigh, one hand on his knee. He automatically, his movement stiff, pats her matted hair.

Caleb lies down carefully, trying not to disturb her. Nott hides herself entirely under the blankets, not even the top of her head or ears exposed, and he feels her pressed up against his chest, burning hot, her heart thrumming through her body.

He draws the blankets up over her, up to his shoulders, and then ducks his chin under their lip. "We all care for you — very much," he murmurs.

"That's what makes it shitty," she says, muffled into his coat.

" _Ja_ ," he mutters humorlessly. "I agree." He shifts, straightening himself out, looking up at the cloudy sky. Nott's hot enough against him that he's verging on uncomfortable already, but he won't, not ever, shift away. "We'll look out for one another," he whispers. "You will tell me and I will tell you."

"Hear, hear," Beau mutters sleepily, the next bedroll over.

He thinks Nott's probably thinking of ways to say no, under all the blankets: that or maybe her reply was too muffled for him to hear. No deal, he imagines her saying.

He'll care either way. He'll worry either way. Whether she wants it or not doesn't matter.

He imagines the fields around them aflame, imagines the scent of blood, puts his arm around her and goes to sleep.


End file.
